The Athena Doctrine: The Rise of Feminine Values in Business

Guest post from John Gerzema, whose new book, The Athena Doctrine, examines the rise of feminine traits and values. Part of The Next Women Career Theme.

For centuries,
workplaces have been dominated by masculine codes of conduct: Be tough. Buck
up. Don’t cry. Those codes are still entrenched today, of course, but their
grip on corporate culture is loosening—and feminine values are gaining an
ever-stronger foothold.

Traits like candor, flexibility,
patience and vulnerability have emerged as remarkable assets in today’s rising
leaders—and, as a result, have trickled down into company culture, reshaping
dynamics in both the workplace and society at large.

In the Athena Doctrine, a book I co-authored with Michael
D’Antonio, we examined the changing role of gender traits across the globe. We
surveyed 64,000 people in 13 coun­tries across a wide swath of cultural,
political and economic diversity. We gathered data from Canada to Chile and
Mexico to Indonesia.

We traveled nearly
four times around the world conducting interviews in another 18 nations. We
talked to people in the favelas of Peru and in villages in Northern India. We
interviewed world political leaders in Brussels and Jerusalem—we even visited
the tiny kingdom of Bhutan, where we met the secretary of the Gross National
Happiness Commission.

Our surveys show that across the globe, people are frustrated by a
world long dominated by codes of male thinking and behavior

An ethos of
control, aggression and black-and-white thinking has contributed to many of the
problems we face today, from wars and income inequality to reckless risk-taking
and scandal. In fact, two-thirds of
people feel the world would be a better place if men thought more like
women—including 79% of Japanese men; 76% of French and Brazilians and 70%
of Germans. Millennials in the highly mas­culine societies of China, Japan,
South Korea and India agree even more strongly than women.

That many men were equally frustrated by masculine structures
points to the desire to include feminine values into society. And this is
already happening. We found that in business, politics and organizations across
the globe, the most innovative among us are breaking away from traditional
gender structures to be more flexible, collaborative and nurturing.

Across the
globe, people are deploying feminine thinking and values to make their
business—and the world—a better place.

In Bangladesh, we met
Eriko Yamaguchi, a Japanese native who had faced her share of challenges as a bullied
child in Japan—hardships that she later translated into an empathetic business
model. While in Dhaka at BRAC University’s graduate school of development
studies, Eriko watched local people endure strikes, floods, epidemics and
economic crises. Determined to make a change in their lives, she resolved to
combine her love for fashion and her entrepreneurial spirit to create
Motherhouse, a high-end handbag manufacturer.

She might have
exploited low-skilled workers in Bangladesh, paying low wages with minimal
benefits. Instead, she patiently taught
her employees (who were virtually all men) new skills—making them more
marketable in the long run—paid living wages and gave her employees stock
options to give them a monetary stake in the success of Motherhouse.

Today, the Motherhouse
ethos is distinctly—and successfully—feminine. The company now has eight retail
shops in Japan and four in Taiwan. The culture is one of collaboration and
teamwork, with open opinion-sharing, free meals and strong sense of
camaraderie. For many of her workers,
the photo on their employee ID badge is the first picture they’ve ever had of
themselves. Yamaguchi-san not only made life better for these workers, she helped
build their esteem.

One critical insight that emerged from our research and conversations with successful leaders was the notion of vulnerability
as a strength, rather than a weakness.

True, the notion of failure as
a catalyst to success is a hot button idea these days—and while there is
certainly merit to this idea, we discovered that much of this failure may be
unnecessary: If we were better at simply admitting what we don't know in the
first place, there would be less failure and more progress.

Leaders who
demonstrate vulnerability are more likely to align others, saving time and
money, and serve as catalysts for innovation.

Consider,
for instance, Dr. Ijad Madish, a Berlin-based scientist whose vulnerability is
reshaping his industry. Though indisputably talented, Madish told us he kept
“getting stuck” in his experiments. He asked his peers for help—and quickly
learned that asking for help is a sign of great weakness. Yet instead of
feeling stymied, Madish felt inspired—and subsequently launched ResearchGate, a
“Social Network for Scientists” that aims to accelerate scientific discovery by
getting medical researchers out of their cubicles and collaborating. Instead of
unchecked egos, Madish encourages scientists to share what they don’t know,
recognizing that by disclosing the hurdles they face, scientists will discover
faster, better solutions to overcome them—benefiting not only their own work,
but society as a whole. Today, ResearchGate has two million members from
two hundred countries. In this way, Madish’s feminine values have effectively
penetrated an entire industry.

Intertwined
with vulnerability is another fundamental tenet of successful leadership: collaboration.

For those in positions of power and influence, there is a
great temptation to believe that stature confers intelligence. And yet across
the board, the leaders we spoke with were keenly aware of their own strengths
and limitations. They did not posture; instead, they sought counsel from people
before making decisions. The most revealing example of this was our time
spent in Reykjavik with members of the fledgling new Icelandic government, who
were revamping their country’s constitution. There, we met Orn Bardur
Jonsson, a Lutheran Minister who was named a constitutional committee member of
the new provisional government. These leaders were left to clean up in the wake
of a financial crisis that burst both the Icelandic economy and the people’s
trust. In order to repair credibility, they made the choice to open-source a
new constitution, drawing from the wisdom of the crowd to reset the country’s
values, expectations and commitments. By listening to and conferring with
its citizens, Iceland’s government revived the people’s faith, restored its own
credibility—and shifted the institutional gender dynamics across an entire
nation.

We met remarkable men and women around the world who were applying a
feminine lens to solving challenges. And this shift toward the feminine does
not portend “the end of men,” but it does suggest a natural balancing that
vastly increases the capacity of both men and women to solve problems and
create a good life. In our surveys, 81 percent of peo­ple say that man
or woman, you need both masculine and feminine traits to thrive in today’s
world and we found that people who think in a more feminine way are nearly twice
as optimistic about their future.

From this point of
view, an embrace of feminine qualities should be thought of as a competitive advantage, not unlike a
breakthrough technology or a major market insight.

All leaders, male or female, innately possess feminine qualities like
empathy, candor and vulnerability. The difference lies in which leaders choose to
suppress those qualities, and which choose to leverage them to establish a
better, more open, and ultimately more productive organizational culture.

John Gerzema is a social strategist and
best-selling author who uses data and journalism to help companies anticipate
and adapt to new interests and demands. John is a Fellow with the Athena Center
for Leadership Studies at Barnard College and a foremost expert on emergent
leadership and executive chairman of WPP Group’s BAV Consulting. His new book;
The Athena Doctrine examines the rise of feminine traits and values, with
Pulitzer-Prize winner Michael D’Antonio. @johngerzema

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The NextWomen is a community of Investors, Entrepreneurs & Advisers. We build formats to support the growth of female entrepreneurs -from
startups to companies making millions. We provide access to capital, resources and networks,
offering our community a support infrastructure critical for success. Join the community too! - See more at: http://www.thenextwomen.com/about-us/contributors#sthash.9GODHllB.dpuf

The NextWomen is a community of Investors, Entrepreneurs & Advisers. We build formats to support the growth of female entrepreneurs -from
startups to companies making millions. We provide access to capital, resources and networks,
offering our community a support infrastructure critical for success. Join the community too! - See more at: http://www.thenextwomen.com/membership/sign-up#sthash.0ApND3BW.dpuf

The NextWomen is
a community of Investors, Entrepreneurs & Advisers. We
build formats to support the growth of female entrepreneurs -from startups to
companies making millions. We provide access to capital, resources and
networks, offering our community a support infrastructure critical for success.